draw the curtains up
by eternata
Summary: Written for the hitman reporn kinkmeme on GJ: Yamamoto and Gokudera, on the piano, with Goku's Mama's spirit watching. [8059, spoilers for target 162]


Written for the hitman reporn kinkmeme: Yamamoto/Gokudera, on the piano, with Goku's Mama's spirit watching.

Didn't end up very kinky, or very Yamamoto/Gokudera, but it DID end up with Gokudera's mom!

Heavy spoilers for target 162.

* * *

draw the curtains up

* * *

They told you he was bad news, of course, that someone like you, with your future stretched out ahead of you, a bright and shining path, shouldn't take up with a person like /him/. Didn't you know? Those people, bad news all of them, they're poison, they'll use you up and spit you out. He won't come to any good end, and he won't do you any favours. And a married man, at that! 

But he was charming and funny and he said he loved you, and it was difficult to think poorly of somebody who liked the piano as much as he did, and you were young and you were famous and you were going to live forever, so you said yes.

And maybe you realised early that they were right, after all, all of them. He was bad news and he was poison; he said he loved you but maybe what he loved was _owning_ you. Then came the nausea in the mornings, and the vomiting, and the doctor (a carefully chosen one in a discreet part of town) who looked you in the eye, smiled with genuine happiness, and said, "Congratulations, it's a boy."

"Would you like to call the father?" he asked, and that smile dropped off his face into sympathy when you shook your head, no.

"We also have a..." he began to offer, but you were already backing out of the room, your arms crossed protectively across your belly without conscious thought.

"No," you said. "No, thank you, no."

You thought that maybe you could already feel that extra heartbeat under your skin. This wasn't a child allowed to exist, but he would. He would be your son, and he would grow up into something great.

So you hid yourself with loose skirts and flowing dresses and complaints of poor health until you couldn't hide anymore, and by then it was too late. And really, that man was not a good man, but he wasn't altogether a bad person, either, and this was how your son was born.

Make no mistake, he was your son: they could call him the progeny of anybody they liked, but more than the colour of his hair and eyes, the most telling was the way he sat balanced in your lap, quietly intense as you guided his tiny fingers across the simplest of scales. He wasn't what you could call placid at the best of times, but sitting at the piano, he never fussed.

They took him away, of course, and maybe he thought that he was doing you a kindness when he allowed you to meet. They never introduced you as anything, but one of those too-few days, he looked up at you with those solemn eyes.

"What should I call you?" he asked. You knew that you weren't alone, you knew that they were listening and watching, but you answered in the only way you could.

"Mama," you told him, your bright and shining child. He didn't blink at that, just nodded, then smiled at you like he had solved a mystery. You loved him then more than anything else in the world, so you kissed him on the forehead, and taught him one of your favorite pieces.

You were suspicious, of course, five months later when they let you see him, because you may have made mistakes (no not a mistake how could your son ever be a mistake) but you weren't stupid. You weren't so young anymore, and not so famous, but you were still going to live forever. So you carefully picked out the best present for him, put on the finest dress you had, red as blood and wine, and your head was held up high as you let them usher you into a car.

At the very end, what you thought was: Be strong, be brave. I love you.

It was easier and harder at the same time after that, but it wasn't as though you could stop, so you watched as your boy grew up, him and his sister drifting like ghosts through that castle. That girl was a strange sort, but you thought perhaps she really loved him, so you let her be.

Throughout it all, with hands that were starting to become rougher and more callused from weapons work and burns, your son continued to play: everything you had ever taught him, and more that he'd taught himself.

And so it went until the day he left that castle, left his sister and the person he called father, a live spark of a boy, bright and determined and angry, taking with him your name and little else. You would have laughed, if you could, when he ended up in Japan. The man had taken him away from you, in the most permanent way that he knew, but he was still your son and nothing else, no matter how roughened at the edges or beaten down he became.

In Japan, he met a boy who wasn't much good in anything except being a good person, and everything started again from there. You were a little jealous maybe, a little sad - everything a parent felt when their child was growing up, that he was finding family that wasn't you, but you were glad for him also because in the end what you wanted was for the best for him, for him to be happy.

You were gladder still when you found him in front of a piano again, the first time in years. Just a cheap school model, but with his fingers on off-white keys and that look of solemn, childish concentration that hadn't changed at all, it was like he was that little boy in your lap all over again.

The sound of the door opening startled you both, your boy hunching back into that tense, defensive pose (which was probably bad for his back, and you wish that he would stop). The person who came in wasn't the 10th heir, but the other child, the one who (like you) had known nothing of that vicious underground world, but had adapted to everything and to your spitfire of a son like a fish to water.

"So here you are," he said cheerfully, walking up to edge of the room, where the piano stood. Always cheerful, always friendly, that one, but not nearly as honest as your boy.

"Fuck off," your son replied (and you really wished that you could do something about that mouth of his, he was too young to be using language like that), but he relaxed just a little. You were surprised when the boy sat down next to him on the piano bench, and even more surprised when your son allowed that strange and intimate liberty, shifting the slightest bit to make way.

So maybe the kiss wasn't as startling as it should have been. Your son took after you in so many other ways, but he didn't kiss the way you remembered doing; he kissed like he was fighting, teeth and tongue and no quarter offered. For his part, the other boy didn't quite fight back, but he didn't back down either. This situation looked like it was going to continue for some time, and you considered looking elsewhere, but your son broke off and leaned back.

"Not here, you freak," he said, slapping at a hand that you realised was creeping down to the waist of his school uniform.

"No one's going to come in." A little lower, a little rougher, that voice, but still oddly cheerful. It looked as though your son was wavering on giving in, so you did look elsewhere (the school needed a fresh coat of paint, it was chipped and peeling everywhere and that was no sort of environment to be keeping a piano in), until a thud and a crash made you look back, despite yourself.

That boy was on the floor, rubbing awkwardly at the small of his back, and you realised that your son had pushed him off the bench.

"NOT," your son said, "At the piano, geez."

"The piano?" A blank look.

"I don't ask you to fool around on the baseball field, do I?" your son said, tapping a cigarette out of his ever-present carton (and here was another habit you wished he would stop) and sticking it into his mouth without lighting it. He didn't get a reply, but you saw a look of serious contemplation on the other boy's face.

"Oh my god, stop thinking now. Stop BREATHING."

"I didn't know you played," he replied, climbing back onto the bench as though he hadn't heard anything.

"You don't know a lot of things."

"I'd like to hear you play."

"And I'd like you to die in a fire, but we can't all get what we want," your son replied snippily, but his fingers settled back on the keys and you knew he was going to anyway.

* * *

. . . orz

* * *


End file.
